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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Hi everyone! Sorry for the lack of postings on this blog during and following the swim. We were short staffed on the crew and although we had updates on Facebook, the blog was a little neglected. My mom reminded me the other day that I hadn't yet updated the blog.

The swim went well. We had a better than expected day on Friday. Water conditions were exceptionally flat with little wind all day long. I had a bit of issues late in the day balancing my nutritional intake, but that resolved itself before nightfall. By near 9pm the waves and wind picked up and we had little relief form that most of the night. It took all I had to last the night. I was taking in warm liquids every half an hour, but it was still hard to keep the chill away (again this was a no-wetsuit swim). The sun came up near 7, which I was very happy about, but the waves did not die down with daybreak. At around 8 I decided I would continue to 9 am, to get to the 24 hour mark, and then we would stop. I had said before the swim began that if conditions were good and I felt well I would continue on past 24 hours, however, neither of these were the case.

I am very proud of both my individual effort as well as the effort of my amazing crew. I was worried after being pulled from the 2013 Canyon Ferry swim at 3 am that I had a mental block which might prevent me from getting through the night, so I am quite happy we got to 24 hours.

It was VERY fun to have Bella and her sister on the boat. They took care of handing me my food during feedings and they stayed out on the boat for all but the last 2 hours. The houseboat was great for accommodating the overnight sleepy crowd. My favorite memory was after the swim when I had to get an IV and Bella was hugging me and holding my hand the whole time.

Our fundraising efforts were quite successful. We have raised over $10,500 for Isabella so far! We will continue to accept donations for Bella through 2014, so this amount may grow a bit higher!

After the swim I took a full week off from work. All my post-swim blood tests came back normal, so my time off was mostly for the resting and sleeping. I returned to work after a week because it was a busy time to be out of the office and even being out a week left quite the pile up of work.

I took a full 30 days off from working out, today being my first workout back and I went for a short run. I'm glad I took that extended time off and I feel really recovered. I've used some of my free time to get going on my book. A friend of mine has allowed me to go to her lake house to write on the weekends, which has been lovely!

I'm looking forward to planning our 2014 schedule and fundraising. Thank you all for your continued support and encouragement!